GreenTec Awards finalists have been confirmed

The online vote on the Green­Tec Awards 2018 final­ists has end­ed: the three most inno­v­a­tive projects have been select­ed from every category’s top 10 list. On May 13, the Green­Tec Awards for the eleventh time will dis­tin­guish the best inno­va­tions in the fields of envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion and sus­tain­abil­i­ty. The exclu­sive gala evening is the pre­lude to IFAT, the World’s Lead­ing Trade Fair for Water, Sewage, Waste and Raw Mate­ri­als Man­age­ment, tak­ing place from May 14 to 18 in Munich.
For every cat­e­go­ry, the jury chose two final­ists, the third was deter­mined in the online voting—with votes from more than 130 coun­tries world­wide. “To only have three inno­va­tions in the finals often seems to be unfair,” says Sven Krüger, Ini­tia­tor of the Green­Tec Awards. “Over and over again, we are impressed with the com­mit­ment of indi­vid­ual peo­ple and the high lev­el of the many projects sub­mit­ted.” Ste­fan Rum­mel, Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of Messe München and orga­niz­er of IFAT adds: “We watch the final­ists of the Green­Tec Awards with great inter­est. New ideas and con­cepts in envi­ron­ment pro­tec­tion are enor­mous­ly impor­tant to find the answers to the most sig­nif­i­cant ques­tions of tomorrow.”

The finalists at a glance

The top 3 in Con­struc­tion & Liv­ing are the projects of DAW SE (sus­tain­able wood care prod­ucts based on cameli­na), CONTAINERWERK eins (con­ver­sion of used sea freight con­tain­ers into liv­ing space) and Werkge­mein­schaft Böhme Hilse Diplomin­ge­nieure Freie Architek­ten (hous­ing area with sur­plus ener­gy, dis­trict-pow­er and e‑mobility).
In the Ener­gy cat­e­go­ry, Fraun­hofer ISE (18 % more pow­er through inno­v­a­tive solar cell design), MWK Bionik (self-clean­ing coat­ing for PV plants) and son­nen (pro­duce, store and share own and clean ener­gy) were selected.
The three final­ists in the Galileo Wis­senspreis cat­e­go­ry are Bio­lab Eber­swalde (sus­tain­able mush­room-based mate­ri­als to reduce plas­tic use), AES (sus­tain­able ener­gy sys­tem to sup­ply a sin­gle-fam­i­ly home) and REI­elec­tron­ics (to allow an eco­log­i­cal and eco­nom­i­cal recy­cling of elec­tron­ic scrap).
In Lifestyle, tip me (tip for prod­uct man­u­fac­tur­ers), Relen­da (the envi­ron­men­tal­ly con­scious gen­er­a­tion: rent­ing and using over buy­ing) and aha-Zweck­ver­band (Han­noc­ci­no: inno­v­a­tive reusable cup sys­tem) took the three places in the final.
In the cat­e­go­ry of Mobil­i­ty, DiniTech GmbH (charg­ing of elec­tric cars on any con­ven­tion­al pow­er sock­et), paper planes e.V. (Rad­bahn under Berlin’s U1) and Alstom (CO2 emis­sion-free train that runs with a fuel cell) are the three best innovations.
The final­ists of Resources & Recy­cling by Veo­lia are crea­pa­per GmbH (grass paper), Enac­tus RUB (a prof­itable, eco­log­i­cal alter­na­tive to burn­ing elec­tron­ic waste) and the Asso­ci­a­tion of Lady Entre­pre­neurs of India (turn­ing indus­tri­al waste into a busi­ness opportunity).
In the Sports by Jack Wolf­skin cat­e­go­ry, Sun­ny­Bag GmbH (The Leaf+ solar pan­el charges all devices on the go), VAUDE (sus­tain­able out­door gear) and Solarskilift Ten­na (world’s first solar-pow­ered win­ter sports) were chosen.
ein­horn prod­ucts (fair and sus­tain­ably pro­duced con­doms), CONTAINERWERK eins (see above) and Fresh Ener­gy (fight­ing pow­er guz­zlers: eco-friend­ly, low-cost, data-dri­ven) com­pete for the Spe­cial Prize Start-up.
The final­ists in Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment are BIO-LUTIONS Inter­na­tion­al (biodegrad­able pack­ag­ing made of 100 % agri­cul­tur­al waste), SUN­farm­ing (agro-solar green­hous­es) and Land Life Com­pa­ny (com­bat against desertification).
The Water & Sewage category’s top3 are Uni­matec Chem­i­cals Europe GmbH (portable water fil­ter), Enac­tus Regens­burg e.V. (cost-effec­tive water fil­ter for Africa) and Enac­tus Hochschule Bochum (Roots Up green house with its own water-production).

The jury meeting

On Feb­ru­ary 21, 2018, the selec­tion com­mit­tee will define the win­ners for all cat­e­gories. The jury con­sists of rep­re­sen­ta­tives of econ­o­my, pol­i­tics and media, includ­ing Prof. Dr. Clau­dia Kem­fert (Ger­man Insti­tute for Eco­nom­ic Research), Mar­co Voll­mar (WWF Exec­u­tive Direc­tor Com­mu­ni­ca­tions) and Anna Loos (actress and musi­cian), thus cov­er­ing all social­ly rel­e­vant fields.
More infor­ma­tion on the Green­Tec Awards is avail­able at www.greentec-awards.com.